Soap and other uses for Raw Milk

This last Saturday was the day we went on a road trip for a soap making class!! DH took me, cause I get lost easy (and hate driving anyway) so figured it would be better all around if he went too. He didn't stay inside in the class though...he headed out back to see the ladies goats. She has some beautiful Nubian's, and said she had 27 or 28 kids this spring...the ones she still has are so cute and growing fast...DH wanted to put a few of them in our car and come home with them. *giggle* The photo above is one of the kids coming up to greet him when he took my camera out to snap a few photos. I so LOVE Nubian's long floppy ears, and hers seem to be REALLY long. LOL

I of course stayed inside and enjoyed the soap making class. We got to watch her make a batch of milk soap, then we teamed up and made 4 batches of soap that we would then be able to take home with us (along with the molds they were in). :) I learned a lot, most of which was when to pour the soap into it's mold, because had I been doing it myself, I would have stirred way to long and had the soap set up in the bucket I was stirring it in. I knew about "trace" which is when you pour the soap, just didn't really know WHAT it looked like...which meant I would have been guessing, and would have guessed wrong.

I've gotten one of the soaps I brought home out of the molds...having a little trouble getting another out, so it's in the freezer right now as she said that should help...and the other one I brought home isn't ready to come out of the mold yet. I'm going to make my first batch by myself tomorrow (hopefully) so when I get it done and out of it's mold I'll try to get some photos of it and the other soaps that are done and share a photo of them on here!

The soap I'm going to make tomorrow is just going to be plain, with no added essential oils, because I want it so I can make laundry soap. The soap I have out of the mold already is a Shampoo bar, so DH said he would have to try it and see if it worked good. The soap that is in the freezer is a luxury bar and has milk, honey & oatmeal in it. I will have to make some other soaps eventually too...but will see how it goes by myself tomorrow. I've still gotta get the supplies gathered and measured out tonight, so everything is ready to go.

Besides the usual things you do with milk (like cooking with it or drinking it) along with making soap and cheese,(and of course giving it to the animals...who love it) the other use we have found for the milk that our goats and cows give us is plant life. I think I've mentioned it before, but had to give an update on how it's helping us. We heard some people have used it in their garden and hayfield and gotten better produce and more hay, so we decided to try it on our hay, garden and young trees this year. We haven't been able to get much on the hayfield, since we aren't getting tons of milk, but most of the trees have gotten a drink of it as well as the garden.

The results of the raw milk on the plants are starting to show up already! The garden is behind the 8 ball anyway...since we are garden challenged, but it's doing better than expected, which tells me the milk is working there. Yippee!! Now I wish we had planted more tomatoes, so I'd have enough for all I'd really like to do with them. *giggle*

The thing we have noticed the most though after getting a drink of milk is some of the trees are really growing! The red bud tree outside my window wasn't a bad size anyway really...for us. LOL But it's getting bushier and growing taller already this year, and I think the little peach trees we planted this spring have even grown taller...just not for sure since we didn't measure them.

I haven't been up to see it, but DH said he even put some on 2 or 3 of the pathetic walnut trees we planted in the first couple years of owning the farm (before we actually lived here). The tallest of them is just behind a gate he has at the top of the hill, and it was still below the top of the gate when he gave it some milk. Now it's above it, and has grown over a foot...just in a few weeks, after not growing much in the past 7 or 8 years...that's amazing to me! Needless to say I sent more milk out with him so he would give the rest of the walnut trees a drink...so maybe they can all grow big and tall for a change.

Then there was the little Oak tree we planted last year in the back yard. It got leaves this spring, but looked sickly, and the leaves weren't really green...they were more yellow than green, so I told DH to give it a drink of raw milk so we could see if that would help the poor thing. Now, a little over a week later it's looking much healthier, with green leaves, except for two or three that are still partly yellow, so maybe it will survive after all!! LOL It's another amazing story for the use of raw milk on plants...least to me! :)

Who knew I'd find this many uses for milk...the poor animals still don't get all they want of it, because we are trying to spread the little bit we get around to all the plants, trees and hay, and still make a little bit of cheese so I don't have to buy it all the time. LOL Our poor hayfield probably won't get all covered this year as it is...just cause we don't get enough to do everything we want to do with it...hopefully when Daisy calves it will help, but still I don't know that we will have enough to feed the animals all they want, make all the cheese I want, and spread it all over the hay field at least once if not twice. We will have to give the garden another round in a month or so too...and the trees some more in the fall. I figured a couple times a year would be good enough for them, this year anyway.

I'd never heard of putting raw milk on plants and having them thrive before this year, but I've become a believer already, just a few short weeks after having tried it here on our own farm. I'm really hoping the raw milk improves the odds on our gardening ventures...so we can actually start getting some garden produce, as well as having trees do well that we plant. I know we have gotten quite a bit of rain this spring too...which helps, but I'm going to have to go with the milk helping a lot, with the different things we have noticed it do...it can't all be just plenty of water...especially the little oak tree.

Ok, I better run, gotta get stuff out for making soap, before supper gets done! I'll hopefully be back with photos of the soap later this week. Have a great week! :)